What’s ruining Toronto this week? No, not condo developers or heritage coach houses. This time, the culprit is grass.
The Toronto Sun reports that Scarborough Southwest councillor Michelle Berardinetti is getting ready to ask city council to join her in opposition to a plan to plant grass on a section of the new street-level light-rail tracks that will eventually be laid on Eglinton Avenue as part of the Eglinton Crosstown project. The idea, which Berardinetti calls “absolutely ridiculous,” first made news in April. Essentially, transit planners want to use some combination of grass and sedum to give the tracks a “green ribbon” appearance. The Crosstown will run underground for about half of its length, so the treatment would be applied only to the aboveground portion of the line, which will run through Scarborough.
What does Berardinetti have against grass? “It’s all about safety,” she told the Sun. “If the green grass is gone, the emergency vehicles can access the trackway.” In other words, if anyone dies waiting for an ambulance in Scarborough, that grass will have blood on its hands (blades?). The idea of allowing emergency responders to use the tracks is an interesting one (the tracks will run in a separated median, sort of like the ones on Spadina Avenue), but it’s not clear that it would be practical, considering the fact that the right-of-way will ideally be full of fast-moving light-rail vehicles. See, this is what happens when Rob Ford leaves town for a while. City hall goes back to worrying about things like killer landscaping.
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